49 - Kemi Badenoch

The Spectator magazine has anointed this week’s Difficult Woman as not only a possible saviour of the Tory party but also a future PM. “ The current equalities and levelling-up minister Kemi Badenoch is made of the right stuff and is creating a buzz in the Tory grassroots with her fearless fightback against the leftist onslaught,” it purred. Kemi Badenoch was re-elected in 2019 as the MP for the Saffron Walden constituency. She’s held several government jobs but is currently Minister of State at the Department of Levelling Up, Housing and Communities and Minister of State for Equalities. She is carving out a fearsome reputation as a woman of colour who takes a machete to the narrative of victimhood from people who say they cant succeed because of who they are and some identity characteristic - be in gender, colour, or class - is held against them by malevolent forces of white or heteronormative privilege. In this LBC podcast, Rachel Johnson's Difficult Women, Rachel speaks with women who had to be a pain in the backside to get where they are today. Women who take the word difficult as a compliment not an insult. And women who had to fight, resist, insist, or otherwise be badly behaved in order to get things done. Listen and subscribe now on Global Player, or wherever you get your podcasts.